Turn-By-Turn Route Guidance Does Not Impair Route Learning

General Audience Summary Turn-by-turn guidance is a common tool used to navigate a new route. But compared to active exploration, route guidance leads to worse memory for the environment. Past research has demonstrated this through tasks such as map drawing and scene recognition, which are worse after following route guidance. Whether route retracing is also worse following route guidance has not been tested. Route retracing is relevant to real-world navigation because navigators often use route guidance the first time that they drive to a new location, but they eventually learn the route and no longer require guidance. Therefore, participants in two experiments navigated a route through a virtual city by using a driving simulator. All participants traveled the route several times during learning, before returning 48 hr later for a final test. There were two learning conditions: Some participants received route guidance throughout learning, and other participants received route guidance initially but were later required to use their memory and received feedback if they made mistakes. Learning condition did not influence route retracing performance on the final test, indicating that route retracing performance (a test of route knowledge) is unaffected by repeatedly following route guidance. Repeatedly following route guidance may be an effective method for learning a new route. Turn-by-turn GPS guidance is useful when the navigator is uncertain about the correct route. Although route guidance is convenient, it comes at a spatial cognitive cost. Compared to unguided navigation, route guidance leads to poorer knowledge of the traversed environment. However, past research has not tested the effects of route guidance on route retracing, which is an important learning goal in many situations. Participants drove a pre-defined route in a driving simulator. All participants initially followed turn-by-turn directions twice (Experiment 1) or once (Experiment 2). Those in the Study condition continued to follow route guidance during two subsequent traversals, whereas those in the Test condition relied on memory and received corrective feedback. Following a 48-hr delay, participants completed a final test in which they retraced the route without guidance. Learning condition did not influence final test performance, indicating that route knowledge is unaffected by repeatedly following route guidance.